


hold my breath in hallelujah

by captainkilly



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Johnnyswim in the Kastle Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 15:30:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Frank Castle attempts to figure out his after.





	hold my breath in hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> A day late, but so heavily inspired by Johnnyswim's wonderful _Touching Heaven_ that I mark it as an entry in this week all the same..

_After_ isn't supposed to feel like this.

 

Curt, of course, begs to differ. Shit, he isn't even into his second mug of coffee yet and Curt's already treated him to a monologue on how recovery works different for everybody. He half-expects the man to start pulling out flow charts and statistics next, because he was always fond of his numbers and was always the one to cite some obscure study none of the rest of them had ever heard of. Billy – goddamn _Billy_ – had jokingly christened him "the professor".

 

Frank Castle wonders what kind of nickname Curt would give Billy, now.

 

"You're doing it again." A sharp elbow presses into his side in warning, ghosting over fading bruises before landing in softer skin, before the sharp scent of homebrewed coffee invades his nostrils. "You gotta get out of that head of yours, man. Thought that construction job was good for you."

 

Good until he had to bury loose ends in concrete. Good until some kid shared his sandwich with him and wound up getting into a vendetta with the local mob. Good until his fingers had curled around the sledgehammer's handle and fallen back into their old pattern of destruction. He hadn't stopped until his fingertips came away red.

 

His hand twitches. His coffee sloshes around in its paper cup. He knows it's muscle memory. Too used to holding a gun. Too used to the reassuring presence of a trigger he can squeeze, a clip he can reload, a safety he can flick on or off at will. Coffee hasn't got that type of permanence. His nose wrinkles as he tips the liquid back into his throat. Fast, too fast, and heat spreads through his esophagus and settles with pins and needles in his chest. His eyes water as he lets out a dry series of coughs.

 

"Hey," says Curt, and it makes sense that Curt would know all the ways coffee burns, "you good?"

 

"Peachy," he replies, nose wrinkling again as he takes aim and slamdunks the empty cup into the bin at the far end of the room. Tries for a little more conviction now that Curt's too-knowing eyes have landed somewhere between the tips of his fingers and his wrists. "Yeah. Group was good."

 

"Group missed your input today." Only Curt could make that observation sound matter-of-fact instead of judgmental. Curt's fingers are steady as they interlace in contemplation. Frank avoids his eyes. Fixes his gaze on the uneven crack between tile forty and tile forty-one on the wall. Wishes he could drown out Curt's voice that way, too. "What's in your head, Frank?"

 

Nightmares. Dreams that leave his mouth dry and his throat raw. The urge to pay scientists to discover a way in which he can intravenously lay claim over darkest, blackest coffee that keeps him awake at all hours of the night. The sound of a carrousel slowly grinding to a halt. Copper in his nostrils and fire licking at his skin.

 

Frank rises to his feet. Spots another crack, wider and more uneven this time, between tile ninety-five and ninety-seven. There is a hole surrounded by fragments of where tile ninety-six used to be. He folds the chair he vacated and sets it down near all the other chairs that are folded and stacked so neatly that, yeah, it'd have to be a couple of vets who'd put them together that way. Sticking to the details helps. Keeping their spaces bare-bones and functional is supposed to help, too, and Frank thinks they're all clinging to that something fierce in the hopes that it'll quieten the mess inside of them.

 

Curt should really think about re-tiling the wall.

 

"Thanks for the coffee," he says instead. Thinks if he stays in this room any longer, he might just go and pick himself up another sledgehammer to fix those damn tiles before morning. Huddles into his jacket to the point where his voice comes out all muffled. "See you next week, Curt."

 

"Sure thing, Frank."

 

He wonders if Curt ever wakes screaming these days, or if the man's demons have slipped between the cracks of the tiles and taken up residence in the walls instead. He wonders what he'd find if he stripped the room bare and fixed all the cracks through which this space isn't yet made whole. Wonders if he'd still fit in then, or if the healed room would be something else altogether.

 

He doesn't say any of that shit to Curt. Just walks out of the room, because he's done with his construction job and he's not supposed to want to tear things down to the ground anymore. Breathes a jagged breath out into the night air that slams into his face and takes up residence beneath his skin. If he closes his eyes, he can hear breaking bones and the steady thwack of the sledgehammer.

 

Frank Castle keeps his eyes open all night.

 

*****

 

"You need to fix the wall," he tells Curt over breakfast two days later. "Plaster's coming loose from the ceiling, too."

 

"We can't all be fancy. It's a new space, we have to give it time to settle." Curt shrugs and pushes the plate of waffles across the table. "That what you invited me to breakfast for? Gotta say, Pete, I'm not really feeling the love here this morning."

 

He doesn't think he'll ever be fully used to hearing someone else's name slip off his friend's tongue, even when he reacts to it with half a smile before digging into the pile of waffles. This is supposed to be normal now. Just two guys talking shop over breakfast before going separate ways and leading regular lives. Curt's got some kind of bigshot meeting about a fundraiser for veterans today. Pete's got deliveries to run and broken sinks to fix.

 

Frank's got nowhere to be and he's not sure he likes that prospect.

 

"Nah, invited you 'cause you got a big thing today," he replies instead, jabbing at a stubborn waffle piece with his fork. "That fundraiser's gonna be good for you. Shit, Curt, you could even get a dog."

 

"A dog."

 

"Service dog. One of 'em pups they train up to assist us, yeah?" He can't stop the half-smile from breaking out onto his face at the thought. "Could get one of 'em labs or something, have 'em sit in on meetings, you know.. All that shit. People share with dogs. They don't share with humans."

 

Curt rocks back in his seat and fixes Frank with a harder stare than he's seen on the man in months. "Sounds to me like you're the one who needs that dog," comments Curt, caution lacing his tone, "and I think it'd be good for you if you did. It'd get you out of the house for something other than waffles, group, and that odd job of yours."

 

"I get out of my house for other things, Curt."

 

"David Lieberman disagrees."

 

"Lieberman's a piece of shit who's never learned to mind his own business." Frank wishes he could sound vicious about it, but instead his words adopt a low-level whinging tone he specifically reserves for all his complaints about David. "He can't leave shit well enough alone. He's got his life back and he's still just.."

 

"Going back to the war."

 

Frank finds it hard to argue with Curt when the man's voice drops into soft understanding of David Lieberman's predicament. "Yeah," he says instead, wishing he could erase all memory of Lieberman's too-knowing eyes. His voice locks into petulance. "I still go out the house more than he says I do."

 

"For what, Pete?" Curt never makes anything sound like an interrogation, not even when he casually slings an arm across the seat and raises an eyebrow at Frank. "What are you doing away from work?"

 

"Stuff. Things." He smirks at Curt as he downs the last waffle piece. "I go out for coffee and beer once a week."

 

"Alone."

 

"Nah. Not alone. I got friends now, Curt, didn't you hear?"

 

"You refuse all Lieberman family dinners," responds Curt, "and Dinah Madani hardly counts as a friend when she has threatened to put a bullet between your eyes the next time she sees you. Our trips to the nearest place that serve up waffles or scrambled eggs really do not count. There anyone I missed?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Anyone I need to worry about?"

 

"No, mother," gripes Frank, scrunching his nose up at the taste of lukewarm coffee. Decides to gamble with the truth for a change. "It's just Karen. You've met her."

 

A pause stretches between them. Curt's face crumples into a thoughtful frown. Frank ignores him. Sets his empty cup down and signals the waitress for a fresh brew. The coffee in this place is really seven miles south of atrocious, but he needs something to help him stay awake after the night he's had.

 

If he closes his eyes long enough, he can still taste blood on his lips and feel a panicked breath against his ear.

 

He shakes his head. Clears it of the cobwebs that are threatening to worm their way down his throat and cover his belly in their anxious ways. Frank scrapes his throat. Taps his fingers against the mug as the bubblegum-chewing fresh-out-of-high-school waitress refills it. He's not surprised to find that he's still subject to a furtive glance from the girl.

 

Attagirl. Recognising danger will keep you alive. He resolves to leave her a tip, even though he can already tell that the new mug of brew isn't any warmer than his old one.

 

Curt, meanwhile, has figured out what's what.

 

"Karen. Karen-'News-Reporter'-Page Karen? That Karen?"

 

"You met her when she covered your group for the _Bulletin_ ," says Frank. "Do you think I know any other Karens?"

 

Curt snorts out a laugh that borders on incredulous. "That explains how she found the group. She never told me. Just said that she'd heard about my work from someplace and wanted to let her readers know some things about it." He shakes his head. "I should've known. She had that glint in her eye. Asked half a dozen questions about the actual recovery process. Like it was personal."

 

"Sounds like her," he hedges out through the lump that threatens to form in his throat. "Too much heart."

 

"You two close?"

 

"Shit, Curt, close, what does that mean? Close how? Close in that she crossed half a dozen lines to get to the truth about what happened to Maria and the kids? Close in that she was the only one out of my legal team I ever saw when I was locked up?" He offers a wry smile in the midst of the barrage that escapes his throat. Doesn't stop to question why the words don't constrict in his chest anymore. "Close in that there used to be a record of me holding her hostage in a diner, close in that she was there when Schoonover died, close in that I went to her when Lieberman showed up? Close in that I held a gun to her head to make my escape one time, and only did it because it was her idea and she never takes any kind of no for an answer?"

 

"I assume there's more story to all of that."

 

"Yeah. Always is. Me and her, Curt, it's what it is."

 

"Do _you_ know what it is?"

 

"Yeah."

 

He doesn't elaborate. Doesn't think he has to when Curt just nods, once, and goes on to comment on the atrocious state of the coffee in this joint. Something uncoils inside his belly at the easy acknowledgment. It shakes loose into his veins and rattles his bones. Heat courses through his lungs the way it did back in Kandahar. Scorches his breath until his coffee tastes like _kanafeh_ and there's sand between his teeth.

 

He downs the coffee. Leaves a ridiculous tip on the table that's got Curt shaking his head. He doesn't know how to explain that it's money to apologise for the girl's discomfort in serving him. Thinks Curt would just tell him he's seeing ghosts again.

 

Frank Castle thinks his body's a walking, breathing, terrifying haunted house.

 

*****

 

"Hold still."

 

He bites down on the inside of his cheek as she jabs the needle into him with more force than is strictly necessary. Her cool hand rests on his skin and pinches the wound shut so matter-of-factly that he is almost afraid to ask if she's done anything like this before.

 

"You changed your hair," he says instead, and desperately tries to not make that sound like an accusation. "It's uh.. It's different."

 

"Yeah." Her amusement dances over his bare skin as she huffs out a short laugh. "Grew tired of assholes thinking they could yank on it and get their way. Grew even more tired of it getting caught in my car door half the time."

 

He half-twists his head to get a better look at her. "I like it," he admits, eyes darting from the familiar way she tucked her hair behind her ears to the new way in which the ends of it barely brush her shoulder. "Suits you, ma'am."

 

"It's ma'am again, now?"

 

Her voice lilts into tones he recognises as too airy, too light, too flighty to survive in that steel trap she calls a body. There's a gleam in her eyes that's too liquid to be from the room's dim light alone. Her mouth curves downward as the needle threads through his skin once, twice, thrice, and done.

 

"Karen," he rasps. Clamps down on the instinct to call her _ma'am_ a second time, even when he's always brought to her heels in the end. "Thank you."

 

"I don't know how it is that you still wind up injured these days." Karen tosses the bloodied cotton balls onto her coffee table and snaps the lid of the first-aid kit shut. He senses her collapse against the pillows behind his back, limbs strewn out and feet stretching onto the table, before he hears a sigh escape her. "You're lucky I once erroneously thought I'd make a great nurse someday."

 

"You still could."

 

"Nope." She pops the _p_ loudly in her mouth. "Teacher told me as much when my first reaction to someone's injuries were to figure out who did this to them rather than how to stop the bleeding."

 

He thinks that may be the most _Karen_ -thing he's ever heard in his life. Lets out a dry chuckle as he shifts backward onto the couch and comes to rest beside her. "Glad you didn't question me on how I wound up with three cuts to the centre of my back. Think I woulda passed out on your floor if you had." He closes his eyes briefly to drown out the memory of a broken pipe's jagged edges tearing at his skin and ripping through him with the white-hot fervour of pain. "Still don't know how I got here."

 

"You passed out. You're goddamn lucky David's such a busy-body."

 

"Lieberman dragged me into his car and got me here." He remembers that much. Recalls how the man's hands had come away slick with blood again, as though they were right back to square one with him bleeding out in David's arms once more. He shakes his head at the memory. "I mostly recall him laughing at me, you know? Apparently it was funny to him that an old lady's apartment almost killed the Big Bad Punisher."

 

He's still that. He's still that man. The moniker rolls off his tongue remorselessly. No matter how long it's been since he last held a gun (two weeks, four days, seven hours ago) or wrapped his hands around somebody's throat and squeezed (five months, one week, six days, twenty hours ago). He's always gonna be that man, now.

 

He's made his peace with that, or so he thinks.

 

"Yeah." Her voice is soft and low as she responds to something in his words that he can't even remember. He sees her mouth curve back up into a smile out of the corner of his eye. "I'd never met him before. Nervous type. Talks a million miles an hour if you let him." Her hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades in reassurance as he gulps too deep a breath into his lungs and is left coughing up the excess air. "Too perceptive, too. His eyes are just.."

 

"Yeah."

 

"I get why you were so rattled about him."

 

He closes his eyes as her fingers dart across his skin and land at the nape of his neck. He doesn't really hear her anymore, even when she's prattling on about Lieberman and about the fact that somehow the man had promised her his cooperation on a piece about whistleblowers and hacktivism before he left. He hears the words but doesn't organise them in his head. She's always a steady stream of passionate speech and he's nodding in all the right places even when her mind goes too fast and his brain doesn't translate everything in the right order.

 

A soft hiss escapes him as his back brushes against the couch's cushion. Jolts him back into the reality that's him sitting shirtless on Karen Page's couch in the middle of the night as if he's got nowhere else to be and nothing better to do.

 

"Thanks for the stitches," he rumbles out between her mention of the Rising Tide collective and her observation that she needs yet another cup of coffee. "Sorry about bleeding on the couch."

 

"I can wash my couch," she says, then, and her smile is so fucking radiant that it knocks the breath clean out of his lungs. "Frank.."

 

"Yeah?"

 

She chuckles hollowly. "This is going to sound stupid."

 

"Doubt that."

 

"Thankyoufornotmakingmebealonetonight."

 

He blinks. Briefly closes his eyes and dissects her ramble the way he always did Lisa's most excited screeches of joy. When he's finally spaced it out – and, god, he stumbles on the _alone_ as much as he does the _thank you_ – he doesn't think he has any words in his mind that still make sense. There's a twitch in his fingers and thunder in his chest.

 

They've always fallen together. He's reminded of that when his fingers find her hand and wrap around her knuckles as if he can absorb the fight that still lives inside her. He doesn't think he has to say anything when her hair tickles his shoulder and her cheek comes to rest against his skin. He doesn't move. Barely dares to breathe.

 

Frank Castle sits on Karen Page's couch and wonders when exactly he became a man ruled by fear.

 

*****

 

Curt lets him rip the tiles off the wall the next week.

 

He isn't sure what to make of it when the man leaves him to it about an hour into the repetitive thwacks and shattering sounds. All he knows is that Curt's eyes had been hollow right before he left the room. Too dark, too sunken into his skull. He doesn't think this translates as the pop-pop-pop of steady gunfire. Breaking tiles off the wall isn't like that. Still, Curt's gaze had been haunted. Like he saw ghosts instead of Frank, a mirage instead of the wall, a horror show where the floor used to be.

 

He doesn't blame Curt for staying away from this exorcism.

 

Frank sets the hammer down. Sweat beads on his brow and trickles down his hair. He wipes it off with one hand. Brushes his hair back impatiently. He doesn't know how long he's spent on it, but two walls are stripped bare and the third is halfway to torn apart.

 

He'd keep going, but his shadow's too long on the floor and the light outside glows faint red at the edges.

 

Curt had made him promise to not upset any of the other people on this block. To keep the noise level down to acceptable in the evenings and nights. Small price to pay for a place this central. Somehow, they'd managed to move group further into the city. There are two sessions now, two groups, and he's got a hunch there'll be more. Curt'd come back from the fundraiser smiling from ear to ear, after all.

 

Frank couldn't be prouder.

 

He surveys the room a final time before shrugging his coat on. Takes care to lock up tight – he doesn't trust the area completely yet – and slings his bag over his shoulder. He pauses on the steps.

 

It feels too normal.

 

He'd thought that, too, when he'd gotten the job at the construction site. Had thought it while driving around town delivering packages to people, too. Still thinks it every time he fixes someone's pipes, even when his back hasn't fully healed and his bones stage a protest when he wants to take a look under the sink.

 

There's a second life lurking around the corner for him, somewhere. Some kind of _after_ that isn't marred by muscle memory or any one of his trigger points. He isn't sure if that's for him. Isn't sure he can drown out the screams, forget the cries, ignore the erratic pace of his own heartbeat drumming the devil's tattoo.

 

Frank decides he might have to try when he steps outside and catches the blue-eyed gaze of Karen Page.

 

"Hi," she says, as matter-of-fact as ever, "Curt said I could wait for you."

 

"You coulda come inside."

 

She fidgets on the spot as the wind picks up the ends of her hair. Smoke curls into his nostrils in warning seconds later. She doesn't meet his eyes when he moves closer toward her.

 

His fingers twitch.

 

He buries the urge to take a gun apart and put it back together again.

 

"Let me walk you home," he says instead.

 

"Can't." She fidgets more now. Hops from one foot to the other. "Can't go home."

 

"What do you mean, you can't go home?"

 

"It exploded. Apparently, I'm dangerous now." She sounds almost proud of herself, but her voice trembles a little too long on the word that spells out danger. Lets out a whistling breath before she shakes her head. "I'm fine."

 

A roaring sound settles in his ears. Thrumming, throbbing, painful jabs to his chest almost claim the entirety of the breath that huffs out of his lungs abruptly. The smoke that curled into his nostrils a moment ago lingers in her hair and on her clothes. He's close enough to smell the gunpowder, now.

 

"Frank?"

 

Her nails pierce the skin of his hands. She's golden fire against the sunset. Molten heat rises in his veins at the sight of her, alive and breathing, alive and well, alive and unharmed. _Kanafeh_ lingers on his lips. Sand coats his tongue.

 

"You don't have to lie to me," he says, voice rasping out all the secrets she wants to keep. "You're not fine at all."

 

He pulls her in close. Breathes her in as she pitches forward into his arms and lets out a shuddering breath he recognises as Karen Page letting go. It takes a heartbeat before his arms wrap so tightly around her that he's almost certain he's cutting off all of her circulation. She doesn't stop him. Her hands scorch the wounds on his back.

 

Frank Castle understands for the first time that he never left the war.

 

*****

 

He takes her home, and it feels like _after_ is meant to feel.

 

"Are you sure you don't mind?"

 

She asks him this for what must be the twentieth time since they walked in the door and he tossed spare blankets her way. Her fingers toy with the hem of his shirt that's too big on her but smells better than her charred-scented clothes ever could. He watches, amused, as her hand rises up to tuck her hair behind her ears.

 

"Karen," he says, and hopes that this encompasses everything he cannot say.

 

"Yeah, okay."

 

"No, it's not," he knows. There's a monster in his chest that won't go away. "None of this is okay."

 

Her eyes won't leave him alone. " _You_ are okay."

 

His laugh sounds hollow even to his own ears. "I'm broken, Karen. Ain't no quick fix for that." _Don't you try_ , he attempts to warn her, _don't you dare_. "I'm a war vet who lost his entire family and was betrayed by a brother. I'm a murderer who walked out of prison because corruption runs deeper than fear." He exhales a breath. "I'm Pete Castiglione because Frank Castle should be dead."

 

"He should be," she agrees, "but he is not."

 

"Isn't he?"

 

Her eyes are dark, like dusk settling in the cornflower blue, and she finds him somewhere in the middle of the night. His fingers twitch before falling still on his lap. He doesn't need to reach for her this time.

 

Her head comes to rest against his brow.

 

"You're here, Frank. With me."

 

"Ma'am."

 

She tilts her head back at that. "Karen," she tells him. Reaches for his hands as though she can fold them around her name and title and let them stay there. "We're not in that place anymore, Frank."

 

"What place?"

 

"Where death's waiting around the corner."

 

"You could have died tonight," he says, and tries to ignore the way his breath hitches in his throat and his fingers hesitate before grabbing hold of her hands. "We're still in that place."

 

"We're not, you know."

 

He raises an eyebrow at that. Stubborn, strong-willed, relentless. He's always known this about her. Has never appreciated it more than in the moments when she directs all of it at him unflinchingly, like now.

 

"What are we, then?" he rasps out. He doesn't mean to sound so lost, but Karen Page always has him adrift at sea. "Where are we?"

 

"We're here. Now." A pause. "Together."

 

She tastes like cherries and firecrackers. Her breath is in his mouth and bee-stings swarm his lips. She traces patterns on his skin and leaves goosebumps in her wake. There's no pressure behind it. No obligation. There's just her.

 

_Karen_.

 

He doesn't have to think about what comes next. Simply winds his hands into her hair as though he's done that a million times before. _In dreams in dreams in dreams,_ he thinks, and his lips decide to make a prisoner out of her at the thought. He presses back against her touch. Pushes against her lips until they part and a low noise escapes the back of her throat.

 

She smiles against his mouth and he forgets to breathe.

 

_Please forgive me,_ he prays to a god that'll never listen to the blood on his hands, _I don't know how else to dream._

 

 


End file.
